“Saudi Arabia ditches its old grift for a newer, shinier grift.”
Lol, they found something even dumber than the linear city. Finally, AI actually took someone’s job.
I mean building a data center is at least much more realistic than the completely physically impossible NEOM. Not any less stupid, but technically possible.
Since the job is grift, it’s actually qualified
The linear city was doomed but better to replace it with a giant bowling alley or just about anything but a data center.
I always felt like even a circular or spiral city would have made more sense, although I’m sure Junji Ito would be disappointed with us for creating the torment nexus.
Damn, now i think a giant bowling alley where you bowl with an excavator would be really dope
What? You mean to tell me this wasn’t feasible?
However, Saudi Arabia’s climate poses a well-documented challenge for data center operations, especially given sustained high temperatures and limited freshwater availability.
That was the first thing that came to my mind. Even if it’s next to the Red Sea don’t they need to desalinate the water?
Not necessarily for cooling. Use a dual-loop system like CANDU nuclear reactors. Fresh water in the inner loop (that goes through the components), and transfer heat to an outer loop full of sea water.
I’d not be too confident about that. There was a flap about the Royal Navy having their ships overheat to failure because the coolant was seawater and the gulf water was too warm to do the job. And those engines only used jet fuel.
But heat is the least reason why I wouldn’t put a data centre there.
Good luck finding enough water for the data centers
I mean it is right by the Ocean
Good luck cooling a data center with salted water
Do you think they care about the environment? They will just extract the water and dump the salt back in the environment killing and displacing most creatures and plants from there… Rich people (some exceptions maybe*) don’t care about other people or the environment.
Did they ever start construction on that dumb city?
They forcibly displaced a bunch of Bedouin tribes for it. Does that count as “starting”?
